While Matteo Salvini thunders against the government’s policy on immigration complaining about landings tripled compared to 2020 and invoking an extraordinary commissioner on the model of General Francesco Figliuolo, and the leader of Fdi Giorgia Meloni relaunches the idea of the naval blockade, the current tenant of the Interior Ministry Luciana Lamorgese rejoices at “the first concrete steps” of the European agreement on relocation last June 10, with visits to Italy by French and German delegates ready to welcome quotas of migrants rescued at sea.
The agreement reached on 10 June in Luxembourg by the European Home Affairs Council provides for the annual relocation of about 10 thousand migrants, identified mainly among those rescued at sea in the central Mediterranean and along the western Atlantic route and then disembarked in the Member States of first entry of the ‘Union. France and Germany have made available the largest shares (3,500 and 3,000 people respectively) among the 21 countries that shared the Political Declaration.
“Naval blockades” and “zero clandestine”, the populists stop at the usual slogans
Karima Moual
Two months later Italy is under particular pressure with the continuous landings that have put Lampedusa in crisis and brought the total of landings to over 42 thousand (12 thousand more than last year). This is why at the Viminale they look with hope at the concrete start of the relocation, marked by the visit to the Cara of Bari – from 28 July to 2 August last – of French officials on a mission to verify the composition of a first group of migrants who will be relocated to the Transalpine country.
Migrants, new landings in Lampedusa
At the same time, the German authorities have announced that they are ready to carry out a similar mission in the course of this month. The mechanism, therefore, has started and even if Italy will not be the only one to use it and the numbers will not initially be impressive, it is a tangible sign of the European “solidarity” long invoked by Minister Lamorgese, who spoke of a “historic stage”.
“I am convinced – she said – that the European Union has taken the right path to face the migratory and humanitarian challenges, as has also been demonstrated in recent months with the response, shared and in solidarity, relating to the emergency caused by the armed conflict in Ukraine which has led to the displacement of millions of refugees to Europe ”.
Blocked grain threatens the world
FRANCESCA MANNOCCHI
Of course, the enormous problems at the origin of the surge in flows remain: first of all, the political and economic crisis in Tunisia and Libya, exacerbated by the grain blockade in Ukraine which is starving several African countries. According to Lamorgese, the obligatory path for an orderly management of arrivals passes through Brussels, where the next Italian government will have to face the difficult task of unblocking the negotiations on the European Immigration and Asylum Pact.